


The Arrangement of Phonemes

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Baby Names, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Insecurity, Love, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Pregnancy, So fluffy I'm gonna die, etc - Freeform, reassurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:24:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary and Sherlock discuss (debate) possible baby names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrangement of Phonemes

**Author's Note:**

> Welp... I have fallen down a rabbit hole. I am the protagonist of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." My brain keeps latching on to new little moments I want to imagine, and then I have no choice but to write them. I will forever be stuck in this perpetual fluff machine of my own creation, until I die a fluffy, sticky death. 
> 
> Also, I'm fairly certain that I read a fic a long time ago in which Sherlock and John had a daughter named Tesla/Tess. I liked that, I guess, because it stuck in my head, although I can't remember the name of the author. If that idea's yours, let me know and I'll credit you appropriately. :) 
> 
> Soooo... here's some more of our OT3 being cute and stuff.

"Tesla."

"No."

"We could shorten it to Tess, if you're going to insist on being so unbearably dull about it."

"Sherlock Holmes, we are not naming our daughter Tesla."

Mary's head lifted several inches and then abruptly dropped again with the force of Sherlock's put-upon sigh. She allowed herself a small smile, knowing he wouldn't see, as he was undoubtedly staring up at the ceiling working himself up for a sulk.

She turned onto her side as much as her enormous belly would allow, her ear pressed into his chest to track the comforting, steady working of his lungs and heart. She was too big now to snuggle up against his side, and so was lying perpendicular to him on the sitting room floor in 221B, surrounded by the usual cyclone of case files and empty tea cups and medical journals, now interspersed with gaily colored paperbacks with names like "The Big Book of Baby Names" and "The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book." Although, she thought with an inward sigh, you hardly needed that one when your co-parent was named Sherlock.

"What about Jamie?"

"Absolutely not."

"What's wrong with Jamie, you giant twit?"

Her head did the bumping thing again, and then lifted a few more inches as he craned his neck to look down on her, the same look on his face as was usually reserved for particularly insipid guests on Alan Carr. She suppressed a smile at the look of utter disgust, which she found endearing. Her amusement at him, as ever, did not fail to wind him up.

"Yes, Mary. Let's just name the child 'Jamie,' and hope that the psychopathic super-genius who seems to have arisen from the grave with no earthly explanation that I can discern and who has once again disappeared without a trace doesn't get wind of it and pop by for biscuits and a sentimental chat with the daughter we named in his memory."

"Hm. Hadn't thought of that. Maybe not Jamie, then."

"Artemesia."

"Just because you and your brother got saddled with the strangest names in all of creation doesn't mean you have to be cruel to those who can't defend themselves."

"What's wrong with Artemesia? A Baroque painter of astounding talent who routinely featured women such as Judith in her work, with whom you have a great deal in common, professionally speaking."

"Judith from the Bible? She was a nurse?"

He gave her that look again. She again suppressed a grin. "You know that she was not."

"Okay, so Jamie's out because it bears a resemblance to the name James-- which I totally get is not allowed, calm down-- but let's name the kid some very singular name that has sideways references to an assassin tacked on to it. Because your enemies are actually so much more dangerous than mine. Yeah. Brilliant." She softened the sting of her words by brushing her lips back and forth across the knuckles of the hand she'd swiped as he sought to run it through his unruly nest of curls.

"Hm."

She knew that was all the acknowledgement that she was going to get that her point was a good one, and that she was forgiven for the Jamie suggestion became evident as his long fingers wound themselves absently through hers. She brought their combined hands to rest on the bump protruding from her midsection, which, according to the charts Sherlock had pinned to the case wall, was 40.23 inches in diameter. His thumb began to stroke absently at the tightly stretched fabric of her (John's) t-shirt, worrying at the cracks in the faded RAMC insignia on its front. 

"I don't know my part in this."

Mary opened eyes that had flickered closed at Sherlock's absent touches, and looked up to where she could see his eyes staring once again straight up at the ceiling.

"Your part in what, love?"

Sherlock's breathing beneath her ear hitched slightly, and his pulse had increased marginally-- whatever he was on about, he was nervous to explain. She heaved herself into a sitting position, flopping around like a nerve-damaged fish until she was facing him and able to look down into his still-- too still, he's hiding something-- face.

"Sherlock, darling. Whatever it is, just say it. We can't fix it if you're going to be all enigmatic and taciturn."

"I am not being enigmatic and taciturn."

"Then tell me what's wrong, love. Please. You don't know your part in what?"

"In this!" His hand, still entwined with hers, clenched gently into the skin of her distended abdomen. "This child whom you call 'our daughter.' I find myself, Mary, not really knowing what you mean when you say that. And I've been told to share my confusion with such things, and so I shall proceed to. Genetically, I have no claim to this child. You are her mother, and John is her father. In any court of law, any hospital, I will have no influence in her life and future in any official way. As far as anyone outside our limited circle of acquaintances will be concerned, I am nothing more than the man who happens to inhabit the same flat as her real parents."

He pulled his hand away from her, refusing to meet her eyes but not hunching dramatically into himself, as was his wont when he was finished talking.

"I do not wish to sound like a petulant child. I realize that this situation in which we find ourselves is singular. But as the only genetically unrelated party, I am uncertain of my... my... damn, what is the word?"

"You're afraid she'll be less yours than mine and John's," she whispered softly. "And the name thing is getting to you because of that."

"It is entirely irrational, I know. But... I contributed no genes to help create this child... perhaps I thought my contribution could be..." He trailed off, his high cheekbones pinking harshly with the embarrassment of this sentimental outburst. 

Mary's heart was suddenly unbelievably warm. She scooted herself closer to Sherlock, pulling him off of the floor and into her arms. She buried one hand into the slightly flattened curls at the back of his head and pressed him close to her chest, so he could hear the beating of her heart.

"Sherlock. I want you to listen to me very carefully, and try to hear everything that I'm saying to you. You are as much this child's parent as John or I. Hell, you knew she existed before either of us-- you saw her so much sooner. I've loved you from the day I met you, because I saw how much you loved John. I fell in love with you because I watched him fall in love with you all over again. And he's loved you so much and for so long... how can you imagine yourself to be anything but absolutely essential to us, to all three of us?" 

Her hand was gently carding through his hair, but loosened as he moved to pull slightly away from her, his eyes roving over her face in search of some tell-- some sign of insincerity. It seemed that he'd found none, because the hard, icy covers that she saw fall over his eyes when he needed to protect himself suddenly lifted, and the swirling cloud of emotions she could read there nearly took her breath away. Fear, uncertainty, sadness... but also hope and happiness and so much love that she couldn't not lean forward and press her mouth to his.

They kissed for long moments, mouths gently brushing, pulling away, pressing deeper again. There was no urgency behind it, not the burning intent that had colored some of their other moments since Sherlock had first joined she and John in bed, but instead a reassuring, comforting sense of belonging settled over the quiet little scene as the street lights came on and illuminated the steadily darkening room.

"Well, this is a lovely sight to come home to."

Mary and Sherlock broke apart to see John, backlit by the hallway lights and smiling softly down at the pair of them on the floor, clumsily entangled around Mary's enormous belly.

Mary smiled tenderly up at her husband, one hand still twisted through Sherlock's hair, and reached the other up toward him, pulling him down to join them when his warm, gun-callused fingers met her own. John came willingly, settling himself on his knees beside them and reaching down to brush a lingering kiss across her mouth. She couldn't suppress the happy sigh that escaped her as his lips gently left her own, moving only inches away to greet Sherlock in similar fashion.

"Hmmm. Yes, I think I could get used to this," sighed John as he and Sherlock broke apart. "Long, hard day of getting puked on, and I get to come home to watch two impossibly gorgeous creatures snogging on the floor of my sitting room. Makes it almost seem worth the vomit, really."

“Did you bring any specimens home?” demanded Sherlock, straightening in a way that meant the possibility of something disgusting to put in the clean sink. “I’ve been wanting to conduct a study of the diet of individuals most likely to contract common strains of influenza in urban environments—“ 

“No, Sherlock. I did not bring you home vomit to poke at,” John cut him off, pushing back on Sherlock’s shoulder so he tumbled into the front of the couch and grinning. “Get enough of that at work—don’t need it all over the flat, too.”

“Oh, joy,” sighed Sherlock, flouncing theatrically backwards so that he was actually half-sprawled on the couch. “First, no naming the child anything remotely interesting, then no vomit… soon the skull and I will be relegated to the dampest corner of 221C while you two go raid a Crate & Barrel.” He was doing a fairly accurate impression of one of his strops, but he caught Mary’s eye very briefly, and a smile threatened to twitch in the corner of his mouth. 

“Drama queen, Sherlock,” John sing-songed as he pulled the taller man down from the couch and kissed him soundly. “Hang on… what’s that about naming the kid? You two said you weren’t going to have that conversation without me!” He glared at them reproachfully, then at the name books that littered the floor around them. 

“There’s no case on, John, and Mary’s as big as a house, and Molly’s banned me from the morgue again for saying Tom’s taste in scarves was appalling. We had to find something to occupy the time, and it was this or Mary coaching me in target practice. I thought you’d object less to this, on the whole.” Sherlock hadn’t ever really disentangled himself from John after their kiss, so most of this was said into the side of John’s neck.

“You would make our… my… your… ugh, fuck it. You would make Mary, eight months pregnant Mary, give you shooting lessons to stave off boredom? No, what am I saying. Of course you would. Well, I suppose this is better, all considered. Now tell me you haven’t gone and named her something mad like… I don’t know, Lilliput or something.”

And there was that Alan Carr look again. Mary tugged lightly at Sherlock’s hand, smiling as he stared at John like he’d just suggested they name their daughter Mycroft. 

“While given her genetic heritage, our daughter is not destined to be overly tall,” here he tossed a pointed look at both Mary and John, then rolled his eyes, “I hardly think naming her after a race of tiny humanoids is necessary to drive the point home.”

“So, if not Lilliput—and ta’ very much for the short crack, by the by—what have you come up with?”

“Mary wants to name her after Moriarty.”

“Oi!” She punched him hard in the arm, to which he responded with a yelp and an indignant curl closer into John’s body. “Jamie is a perfectly nice name—the nut job simply slipped my mind, is all. I wasn’t around when he was strapping people to Semtex and forcing other people off buildings, after all.”

John nodded, but looked slightly queasy at the memory and tugged Sherlock that much closer to him. “I think we can skip Jamie, for sure. No cause for tempting fate, after all.” He ran his nose through Sherlock’s hair, lips lingering for a long moment on the skin above his left temple.

“Sherlock wants to name her after some dead American scientist,” Mary accused, smiling mischievously as Sherlock glared at her from beneath his eyelids, not fussed enough to forego John’s ministrations.

“Far be it from me to prevent you from naming her something dull,” he murmured, although she knew, as she always did, that he’d not totally overcome the uncertainty of earlier. 

“Well… I’ve been thinking,” ventured John, resting a hand on Mary’s belly while the other toyed with one of Sherlock’s more springy curls. “I told you at the airfield that we weren’t naming our daughter ‘Sherlock’… and I stand by that. Weirdest name ever. Oi!” Sherlock’s teeth were digging lightly into John’s shoulder in retaliation for this. “But it hardly seems fair that Mary and I get to know that we… we made her, you know? And you’re as much a part of this as we are… so her name should have something to do with you.”

Mary watched Sherlock’s face go very still, and she loved John so much she was going to die with it. It never ceased to amaze her how well the two of them fit, how they knew the other’s deepest fears and greatest loves, how they were always exactly what the other needed from moment to moment. And they both loved her, somehow, too. What had she done to deserve them?

“Tell me if you hate it, because I really don’t mind if you do, I just thought it was similar enough to be evocative without being obvious and you’d have to look closely to see it, with the little changes and everything, and it might seem dull, but I just thought… with the connection… it might… fit.” 

Mary had rarely seen John this nervous. Even that first night with Sherlock, when they had very nearly lost him forever only to get him back again four minutes later, there had been a calm certainty in the way John had pulled Sherlock to him, fitting their lips together with no hesitation or fear. 

Both Mary and Sherlock were watching John now, who was blushing slightly and unable to meet their eyes. Mary squeezed his hand reassuringly, and Sherlock’s intent gaze had no echoes of Alan Carr. He was simply looking at John as though he was the most fascinating puzzle, and he was about to be given the answer. John looked up at the two of them, and took a quick breath in. 

“I thought… maybe… Charlotte?”

There were a few moments of silence in which Mary felt a little swoop in her heart, and may have imagined the kick only slightly below it. Sherlock was looking at John in that puzzle-way, a tiny smile creeping onto his face. 

“Hm. Similar, but not outright imitation. Subtle phoneme changes that nevertheless remain consistent enough to trace the connection, if one is observant.” Mary could see Sherlock warming to it, now. “Common enough so as not to be inflammatory to our enemies, but classic, not prosaic. Jane Eyre and erudite arachnids and French female assassins and Darwin… yes.”

He smiled that crooked smile at John—the one that filled his entire face and turned his eyes into silvery slits. John smiled back, letting out a huff of relief as Sherlock bent his head to kiss John’s eyelids before turning his head—as if suddenly remembering that nothing had been decided, to Mary. And the two of them sitting there looking at her as though she were about to pass judgment on their banishment to Pluto… she couldn’t keep them in suspense, as much fun as it would have been. 

“Charlotte Watson,” she tried it out, loving the feel of the name on her tongue. And she definitely hadn’t imagined the kick that time, although Sherlock would insist that it was nothing but fortuitous timing, should she mention it. 

“Charlotte Grace Watson,” said John, and Mary felt her throat close up with emotion. A meaningful look passed between the three of them, and the ghostly scent of burning memory stick seemed to float past them on a draft. She nodded mutely as Sherlock pulled her close to him, his long fingers splaying over her stomach to feel the minute fidgeting of their daughter—Charlotte. 

“And we can call her Charl for short,” John broke the silence, smiling meaningfully at Sherlock. “Charl and Sherl.”

“Call either of us those ridiculous ‘nicknames’ again and I shall cheerfully murder you where you sit, John Watson.”

“What? It’s okay for Janine, but it’s not for me? That’s not on, mate.”

“When you allow me to call you Johnny Boy as Harriet does, then we shall argue about ‘Sherl.’ Although I should warn you in all fairness right now that it will be an argument that you will, of course, lose.”

“Like you’d ever call me Johnny Boy, even if I’d let you. Which I wouldn’t, just so we’re clear.”

“So we’re agreed that there shall be no more mention of diminutive forms of either my name or of Charlotte’s?”

“You’re not stopping me calling my daughter by whatever part of her name I damned well please, Mr. I’m-Too-Posh-For-Nicknames.”

“Call her Lottie, and they’ll never find your grave.”

Mary leaned back into the base of the couch and watched her boys bickering in that familiar, affectionate way they had, her left hand stroking absently up and down her stomach, Charlotte kicking in harmony with her fathers’ laughter.


End file.
